On Friday, Psyche Williams-Forson joins Clarkisha Kent, author of Fat Off, Fat On: A Big Bitch Manifesto, for a discussion featuring samples of traditional Black and African American diasporic dishes. Images courtesy of the VA Festival of the Book.
One day, Psyche Williams-Forson’s daughter stopped letting her father pack Ghanaian food for her lunch. Her lunchbox smelled different than others, and she didn’t want to be made fun of. This is still a familiar scene for some American students coming from migrant families, and unless people rethink their understanding of food culture, it will be for future generations too, Williams-Forson says.
“It’s a sad story, and we’ll say, ‘Oh, that’s horrible,’ but we don’t teach our kids anything different,” she says. “The cycle repeats. It’s not just about the food. It affects the person’s whole being.” In an effort to break this cycle, Williams-Forson wrote Eating While Black: Food Shaming and Race in America, which she will discuss at the Virginia Festival of the Book.
In an era of what the University of Maryland professor calls “food hysteria,” where people fight to define their diets by trendy labels like “organic,” “clean,” and “local,” Eating While Black argues that Black Americans remain connected to important traditions, cultures, and histories by eating foods often shamed for not fitting within these categories. Eating While Black is also the culmination of Williams-Forson’s passion for delving into African American history, which began while studying literature at the University of Virginia on her way to majoring in English, African American studies, and women’s studies.
“It occurred to me that I was really interested in the context in which these texts were emerging,” Williams-Forson says. “And in order to find out the context, the historicity, you have to do a little bit more research. You have to go outside the text itself.” As a research assistant during graduate school at the University of Maryland College Park in the 1990s, Williams-Forson found there was little information available about African American foodways. Her searches for Black food history turned up only old cookbooks with recipes for collard greens and cornbread. “I was being told the same thing: These are foods that Black folks tend to eat,” Williams-Forson says. “What I was curious about is, why were we eating these foods? And that question opened up a whole world for me.”
This journey into the history of Black Americans’ relationship with food took Williams-Forson everywhere, from the annals of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to the archives of Alderman Library. Growing up, the author had been told Black food culture descended from enslaved people being forced to eat only scraps of discarded food. Her research painted a very different picture. Williams-Forson read about ships that carried to America not only enslaved people but ingredients from their homelands, from okra to melons to black-eyed peas. She found evidence that some enslaved people were able to hunt and forage, and that they introduced new cooking techniques like deep frying to the continent while preparing these foods. She learned that even while under horrific subjugation, enslaved people began a complex and variegated food culture, one that exists today in everything from traditional Southern dishes to Louisiana Creole foods.
By expanding upon this history in Eating While Black, Williams-Forson hopes she can encourage African Americans to discuss the origins of why they are shamed, and why they shame others, for what they eat. “Will everyone agree with me? Absolutely not,” Williams-Forson says. “But at least we can have a conversation about it, and recognize that some of the things you’ve heard growing up, some of the things that you think about other people or about yourself, are actually not true.”
Psyche Williams-Forson will appear at Food and Blackness at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center on Friday, March 24.
No. 26 on the county’s list of transportation priorities is a shared-use path and multiple crosswalks along Old Lynchburg Road between Azalea Park (above) and Timberland Park Apartments, which would improve pedestrian safety and mobility. Photo from the Office of the UVA Architect.
Population growth and the impact of a more congested community is not limited to one political jurisdiction. But how well is this place set up to build transportation infrastructure that straddles borders between Albemarle, Charlottesville, and the University of Virginia?
A recent letter from the Fry’s Spring Neighborhood Association asked the City of Charlottesville to find a way to contribute to a sidewalk project Albemarle County has preliminary plans to build on Old Lynchburg Road.
“The FSNA recommends city participation because it would add a sidewalk, connect a portion of the Rivanna Trail, and would provide access to new city-owned parkland on the other side of Moores Creek,” reads the February 13 letter to City Council. “It would be easy to view this sidewalk as a facility mostly for County residents, but this is wrong.”
City staff met with members of the FSNA last week to discuss the project, which is one of many potential projects Charlottesville Public Works could be working on in a city with many residents clamoring for projects. There’s no list that community members can look at online for the most up-to-date information.
“This project would construct a shared-use path and multiple crosswalks along Old Lynchburg Road between Timberland Park Apartments and Azalea Park to improve pedestrian safety and mobility,” reads the list, which also states this project could be a collaborative project with the City of Charlottesville.
That collaboration is taking place.
This project dates back to Albemarle’s budget for FY20 when $6 million was programmed into the capital improvement program for “quality of life” by building sidewalks and bike lanes. The pandemic delayed the project and the decision was made to put that money toward projects that can attract further funding from the Virginia Department of Transportation.
According to Albemarle County spokeswoman Abbey Stumpf, Albemarle paid $72,280 for an engineering study with detailed drawings that have been reviewed by both the Virginia Department of Transportation and the city engineer.
“The results of the study were shared with Charlottesville leadership for consideration of a potential cost sharing arrangement,” Stumpf said. “There have been several discussions, but no commitments yet as both agencies work through the FY24 Budget development process.”
The FSNA sent a letter and set up last week’s meeting to get answers into a process that can be mysterious to citizens and elected officials. City trail planner Chris Gensic was there to talk about the city’s recent acquisitions of parkland in Albemarle. City Councilor Brian Pinkston also attended to get information.
“Parents who were there told how dangerous it is to have kids crossing the road from Azalea West to the main part of Azalea Park, so having a crosswalk would make a huge difference,” Pinkston said.
But Pinkston said the city has a lot of different priorities to sift through as it rebuilds after an era where none of those projects were ranked. A relatively new deputy city manager is on the case.
“The intrepid Sam Sanders is trying to figure out how to make the project plan work,” Pinkston said.
The Albemarle and Charlottesville planning commissions have not met since January 2017, but there’s talk another meeting may take place this year. A public body that had been set up to discuss regional growth was disbanded in late 2019. At its last meeting, the Land Use and Environmental Planning Committee did discuss major transportation issues, but these were about larger projects such as the forthcoming changes to Hydraulic Road and U.S. 29.
The University of Virginia women’s swimmers stole the show at the 2023 NCAA championship in Knoxville, where they won every relay and set several new NCAA and American records. Photo by Matt Riley / UVA Athletics.
On March 14, the University of Virginia women’s swimming & diving team made its way to Knoxville to compete in the 2023 NCAA championship meet. Energy levels were high, and, as UVA fourth-year Ella Nelson put it, the teammates were just trying to contain their excitement.
UVA’s swim team wasn’t the only one housing Olympians and American record holders. Stanford University and the University of Texas at Austin brought their best to compete, too. But Virginia Head Coach Todd DeSorbo went into the meet with confidence. “I think arguably, we’ve got the best team that we’ve ever had here at UVA, so I feel really good,” he said.
Over the course of the meet, the UVA women’s team won every single relay, took down six new NCAA and American records, captured first in 12 out of 21 events, collected almost three times as many All-American performances, and scored over 100 points more than any other team. By Saturday, the Cavaliers won their third-straight NCAA championship title.
Prior to its NCAA championship win in 2021, UVA consistently floated in the top 10 college women’s swim teams, but wasn’t at the forefront. Current fourth-year swimmers experienced a rise to national dominance since they arrived, going from being in the mix of good teams to blowing the rest out of the water.
Lexi Cuomo, an American record holder and fourth-year swimmer, says that despite the swimmers’ ascension in national rankings, the team culture stayed the same over the past four years—with a focus on working hard for each other. “I went from kind of benefiting from having the team culture already set up like that, where I have to really put in the work to contribute to this, and now I’m the one leading it or trying my best to lead it,” she says.
Even without a change in team culture, the mark these athletes left in the world of swimming evolved over these past four years. Fourth-year Kate Douglass is leaving the women’s team with six American and NCAA records, spanning multiple strokes and distances. But while having fast times holds weight, she also considers her impact outside the water. “I just wanna be known as someone who was a good teammate, and obviously I’ve left my legacy on the record boards here and I’m really happy with that,” she says. “But I definitely think one of the main reasons why I chose UVA was because I knew I had a chance to help make this program one of the top programs in the country.”
Multiple swimmers mentioned their goal of making UVA a team that younger swimmers can look up to. “This could potentially be our third NCAA win in a row,” Nelson said a few days before the swim meet. “But I think our goal is to create the UVA legacy for all of the little girls who are little swimmers and looking up to all of us college athletes and wanting to hopefully come to UVA.”
Nelson says that “legacy” has become a motto for the team. “The easy part is setting the legacy in the pool,” she says, “but it’s also the legacy of who we are as a team and the team culture that we wanna build for the years to come.”
The end of the 2023 season means saying goodbye to a handful of elite swimmers on the team, including Douglass, Cuomo, and potentially Nelson if she doesn’t take a fifth year. Between Douglass’ individual American and NCAA records in the 100 butterfly, 200 individual medley, and 200 breaststroke, and Douglass and Cuomo’s shared American and NCAA records in the 200 medley and 200 freestyle relays (plus Nelson’s top-tier national performances in individual medley and breaststroke events), it’s safe to say the Cavaliers are losing some of their highest-performing swimmers.
But DeSorbo isn’t nervous for future seasons. “You can’t fill the shoes of those people. And that’s the challenge that we’ll face heading in the next year. But the way I look at it is I think you want that. You want that every year,” he says. “You want people graduating from your program that are irreplaceable.”
After a third national title, Douglass closes her collegiate chapter with nothing but positive things to say. “It’s very important to me—the third national championship of this team—because I feel like, coming into UVA, that was just all I ever wanted for the program was to be a part of a growing program, and then my second year we won our first one and then we just kept winning after that,” she says. “So yeah it’s pretty cool to see a third one now.”
DeSorbo won’t forget what these swimmers have done at UVA any time soon. “I’m forever grateful that they took that leap of faith,” he says. “And certainly they’ve come in and bought in immediately. They believed and trusted immediately, and were just really excited to be a part of the potential rise of our program. And they’ve all just been such great people and influences and leaders on our team that they’re definitely gonna leave a lasting legacy, and they play a significant role in where we are today.”
A resident who lives near Adrienne Skaggs’ home on Fray’s Mill Road says there have been multiple complaints made about dogs at the property over the past three years. Supplied photo.
In 2019, Albemarle County rolled out restrictions on homestays, limiting which properties are eligible to be listed on sites like Airbnb. Home child care centers also merit their own county code section. Now, the owner of a dog who disappeared after being left with an Albemarle-based pet-sitter says the county should regulate in-home animal care services offered through sites like Rover.com and Wag.com.
“I think that there definitely has to be some kind of accountability for any animal care inside of a residential home,” says Michael Juers, whose 2-year-old Chihuahua, Rosie, vanished last April after he and his wife dropped their two dogs off with Adrienne Skaggs on Fray’s Mill Road.
The current county code has stringent requirements for commercial pet-boarding operations: Animals must be kept in a sound-proofed building, for instance, and dogs must be contained in outdoor areas by an external solid fence with a minimum height of six feet. All animals must be indoors between 10pm and 6am.
Those conditions were apparently not met at the Fray’s Mill Road property, where Juers dropped his dogs off as he and his wife prepared to move from Charlottesville to Florida. After Rosie disappeared, the Juers soon learned they weren’t the only ones to suffer such devastation after trusting Skaggs with the care of their animals.
Multiple other dog owners reported similar experiences with Skaggs, including one whose dog reportedly escaped within an hour of arrival at Skaggs’ home and was promptly hit and killed by a car.
Another dog was also hit by a car after escaping Skaggs’ property, but survived.
“Our number-one goal is really just to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else,” said that dog’s owner, Ben Combs, in a February C-VILLE article.
Albemarle County Supervisor Ann Mallek says supervisors haven’t discussed restricting pet-sitting services, but she expressed an interest in exploring the possibility.
“I’ve asked staff to provide me with more information,” Mallek says.
A county resident who lives near Skaggs says Albemarle County Animal Control has been aware of issues with Skaggs’ pet-sitting operation since long before the Juers or others dropped their dogs off.
Ben Combs and Laura Brown’s Chihuahua Olive escaped from Skaggs’ property in January and was hit by a car but survived. Supplied photo.
“We’ve been sounding the alarm for years,” says the resident, who requested anonymity due to fear of retribution from Skaggs.
The resident provided a document listing complaints called in about Skaggs since 2020. Among the incidents listed are multiple occasions of dogs running loose, loud barking, dogs behaving aggressively, and the sounds of semi-automatic gunfire coming from the property. The resident says both animal control and Skaggs’ landlord have been repeatedly notified of the issues.
Through a county spokesperson, Albemarle County Animal Control declined comment, citing an ongoing investigation. Online court records show Skaggs has been found guilty of misdemeanors relating to the care of dogs since January 1: two counts of running at large and inadequate animal care. In addition, Juers has filed a civil claim against Skaggs that is still pending.
According to Albemarle County property records, the property Skaggs is renting at 2641 Fray’s Mill Rd. is owned and managed by Veliky Commercial Properties. An online sample lease available through the Veliky Rentals requires tenants to “conduct themselves in a manner that will not disturb his neighbors peaceful enjoyment of the premises” and “not to use the property for any purposes other than residential.”
There was no response to an email sent to Veliky requesting comment on the complaints, and a woman who answered C-VILLE’s follow-up call declined comment.
“We aren’t going to entertain that,” she said.
Skaggs did not respond to an online message requesting comment, and a woman answering a previous call to a number listed for her online claimed it was the wrong number.
Juers says he hopes the pain and loss he and others have experienced will prompt a change in the county code.
“Inspections even, just like the county health inspector would,” he says. “Maybe they’re allowed two citations and then have to be shut down.”
James Alex Fields Jr., who’s serving life in prison for killing one person and injuring dozens more in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017, has asked a court to reduce the amount of money the Justice Department can seize from his prison commissary account. Photo by Eze Amos.
Judge approves seizing Fields’ funds
Six years after Charlottesville made national headlines during the deadly Unite the Right rally, a Virginia federal judge has authorized law enforcement officials to seize funds in the commissary account of James Alex Fields Jr., who was given two life sentences without the possibility of parole for killing one woman and injuring dozens more when he plowed his car into a crowd of peaceful protesters on August 12, 2017.
Inmates use money in their commissary accounts to purchase discretionary items, such as food, hygiene supplies, and technology. Fields’ account balance has suspiciously reached new heights. The Justice Department hopes to seize at least $650 of Fields’ funds, and use the money to help pay off $81,600 in unpaid restitution and fines from his criminal case.
The names of donors to the account were concealed by the Justice Department—prosecutors claimed “various individuals’’ have been sending Fields money. However, testimony from a civil federal lawsuit filed against Fields suggested affiliated white supremacist groups could be behind the cash influx. Fields may also be in contact with other white nationalists.
Court filings indicate Fields’ trust balance was $759.86 in December of 2022. The current balance is unknown, but prosecutors say it is “significant.”
In a handwritten note, Fields requested the court “to reduce the payment from my trust account requested by the Government from $650 to $298.” He said he intends to use the money for postage stamps, phone calls, and other “sundry items.”
Prosecutors noted blemishes in Fields’ prison track record. In December 2020, he allegedly crafted a homemade knife, and, the following month, made a “threatening remark” to a prison officer.
Michael F. Urbanski, a federal judge for the Western District of Virginia, denied Fields’ appeal. The court retains the right to seize Fields’ funds, but Urbanski’s office refused to release the court transcripts.
Because the court provided limited context, the basis of Urbanski’s ruling is unclear. The impression left by prosecutors though, and the little information available, points toward the possibility of conspiracy involving Fields and known white supremacist groups.
On what grounds did the court seize Fields’ funds, and were they meritable? According to CJ Oswald, a doctoral student of philosophy and law at the University of Virginia, “it’s complicated. This is one of the things you run into in both moral and political philosophy. You want to prevent harm as much as possible, and you want to prevent certain groups from coordinating in particular ways. But there are also legitimate concerns about the expansion of state power and monitoring. This is what you see after 9/11 and the institution of homeland security and their monitoring programs of U.S. citizens. And then beyond that, there’s the issue of the pre-punishment case.”
A self-proclaimed white supremacist, the then-20-year-old Fields drove to Charlottesville in August 2017 from his home in Maumee, Ohio, to support protesters opposing the removal of Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee statue. His time in the city was lethal: Fields killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injured 35 others.
In 2019, Fields was sentenced in Virginia state court to life in prison, plus 419 years and $480,000 in fines. A month earlier, a federal judge also sentenced Fields to life in prison (the two sentences are running consecutively). Fields pleaded guilty to 29 federal hate crimes to avoid the death penalty, and is currently housed at a federal prison in Springfield, Missouri.
In brief
Man killed
At 2am on March 18, police responded to a shooting in a parking lot near Elliewood Avenue on the UVA Corner, and issued a shelter-in-place order. The victim, 26-year-old Cody Brian Smith of Charlottesville, died from his wounds at the hospital. On March 20, Charlottesville detectives arrested and charged 21-year-old Lakori Brooks with second degree murder and the use of a firearm in the commission of a felony in connection with the shooting.
Missing teen
Seventeen-year-old Quiniya Mikia Best ran away from home on February 24, and has not been seen since. Best—who is 5’2″, weighs 175 pounds, and is known to frequent areas in Charlottesville and Waynesboro—was last seen wearing a medical boot on her right foot, a red and black shoe on her left foot, blue jeans with ripped knees, and a gray or black sweater. Anyone with information regarding her whereabouts should contact Detective Christopher Wagner at 970-3973.
Dropping out, joining in
Charlottesville social services assistant Dashad Cooper has dropped out of Virginia’s 54th House District race, and is now running for the Democratic nomination for Charlottesville City Council. Mayor Lloyd Snook and Councilor Michael Payne announced their re-election campaigns last month, but it remains unclear if newly appointed Councilor Leah Puryear will run for re-election.
Dashad Cooper. Supplied photo.
Travel scholarships
Local residents can apply for an up to $1,000 scholarship to participate in a trip to one of Charlottesville’s Sister or Friendship Cities this year. To apply, go to cvillesistercities.org/travel. Applications are due by March 29 at 5pm.
A classical masterpiece is updated with stunning modernity in Orpheus and Erica: A Deaf Opera. The culmination of a years-long collaboration between Victory Hall Opera and a team of deaf theater practitioners, Orpheus and Erica sees a young couple battling illness and fertility tempt fate by using modern medicine. The clever production weaves together Italian opera, poetry performed in ASL, choral song, and orchestra arrangements to create a musical experience unlike any other. With a writing and production team that includes Miriam Gordon-Stewart, Gregory Orr, Michael Slon, and Alek Lev, plus a cast of renowned opera singers and deaf stars.
Last fall, Kalela Williams hit the ground running as the new director of the Virginia Center for the Book—she only had six months to organize the Virginia Festival of the Book, a process that usually takes well over a year. Williams came to the festival from Philadelphia, where she previously worked for Mighty Writers and the Free Library of Philadelphia. In her spare time, she’s writing her debut YA novel, The Tangleroot Papers, coming next year from Feiwel & Friends. Now, the 2023 festival is a week away, and boasts a lineup of bestselling authors and page-turners from the likes of Matthew Quick, Nyle DiMarco, and Rebecca Makkai. The Virginia Festival of the Book (vabook.org) takes place from March 23-26. Stay tuned for our festival coverage in next week’s C-VILLE.
Age: 44.
Pronouns: She/her.
Why here: I live in Staunton because it’s cute, small, and cool.
Worst thing about living here: The hills—they give you a challenging walk!
Best thing: The hills—they give you amazing vistas!
Favorite restaurant: My house. My boyfriend’s cooking could win a reality show.
Favorite hangout spot: Redbeard’s in Staunton. There’s always people you know and usually something fun’s going on.
Bodo’s order: Whatever my colleagues bring to the office. I like carbs, so I’ll take ’em any way I can get ’em.
Who is your hero: My ancestors. All of them.
Best advice you ever got: Bring a jacket.
Biggest lie you’ve ever told: I don’t need a jacket.
Proudest accomplishment: Getting a publisher.
Describe a perfect day: It would involve eating, hiking, writing, and drinks.
Do you have any pets: Three ridiculous cats: Courage, Trapezoid, and Wheatley.
Favorite writers: Oof, that’s a really tough one. I especially like works that engage with the past, whether it’s one’s own lineage or history in a broader sense, because that’s what I write. So I read a good bit of old letters and diaries, but in terms of more familiar authors, it’s perhaps Geraldine Brooks, Annette Gordon-Reed, Li-Young Lee, Nathaniel Philbrick, and Jacqueline Woodson.
Favorite book: If I had to choose, The Good Lord Bird by James McBride. The Age of Phillis by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is also a big one for me.
Most embarrassing moment: I have this recurring nightmare that I go out in public with no pants on, and then I’m like, “Oh, wow, why did I think it was okay for me to wear this?” Or rather, not wear this. And in my weird dream, I’m sneaking around, trying to hide behind ferns and stuff. So I woke up in full “Gah!!!” mode the other day, relieved it wasn’t real, but you’d think I would’ve taken more care getting dressed. Nah. I put my pants on backwards, and didn’t realize it until the middle of my workday after a bunch of meetings. There I was, just strutting around with my back-pockets forwards. I should’ve found myself a ficus tree and planted myself there. (Ha! Planted. My jokes are another source of embarrassment.)
What are you listening to right now: Elevator music.
What’s a song you pretend you don’t like because it’s embarrassing that you love it: Maybe it’s a genre. I have a little soft spot for country.
Who’d play you in a movie: Amber Ruffin.
Celebrity crush: I don’t crush on celebrities anymore, but my girlhood loves include Cary Elwes (as you wiiiiissssh!), the boys in a short-lived ‘90s group, The Boys; the guy who played Lando Calrissian, and David Bowie in Labyrinth (but ONLY in Labyrinth. Outside of that? Meh).
Most used app on your phone: MS Outlook (sigh).
Last text you sent: “I have exploding head syndrome when I’m exceptionally sleep-deprived but aliens are new to me.”
Most used emoji: A heart.
If you could be reincarnated as a person or thing, what would you be: I would be a ridiculous house cat so that I could bask in the sun all day, demand that people rub my belly, then bite them for no good reason.
Subject that causes you to rant: Banned books.
Best journey you ever went on: A solo trip to Toronto, which I took because the Royal Ontario Museum had a special exhibition on blue whales: a skeleton AND its plastinated heart.
Next journey: Wherever my next writing research project takes me.
If not yourself, who would you be: No one. I love being myself because it always makes things interesting.
Favorite word: “Gah!”
Hottest take: Avocados are gross and olives are the devil’s eyeballs.
What have you forgotten today: Gah! Probably everything!
“The Gathering series is all about building community … it’s a call to look inwards and find what matters,” says Carbon Leaf frontman Barry Privett. The Richmond, Virginia, faves recently released the second volume in a four-part series that finds the long-running quintet returning to its acoustic roots. Gathering Vol. 2: The Hunting Ground is a gutsy and cathartic collection that grapples with grief, loss, anger, and pain. Raw acoustic arrangements come together with lush fiddle, banjo, and guitar to create five dimensional songs, including “Everything’s Alright Mama,” a gritty Appalachian folk tune with lilting Celtic influences.
Saturday 3/18. $20-25, 7:30pm. The Jefferson Theater, 110 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. jeffersontheater.com
Despite a wild plot based on a real story, Cocaine Bear, starring Keri Russell, doesn’t live up to its big buzz. Image: Universal Pictures.
For months, the publicity buildup for Elizabeth Banks’ horror-comedy Cocaine Bear has convincingly sold it as deliriously entertaining nonsense. The movie’s hilarious, unrepentantly trashy trailer boldly spelled the plot out: A hulking black bear high on cocaine rampages through the Georgia hills. Sadly, the film is a missed opportunity that doesn’t deliver on its very appealing hype.
The story opens in 1985 as drug smuggler Andrew C. Thornton (Matthew Rhys) flings duffel bags full of cocaine from his auto-piloted plane into a Georgia forest. With the plane in trouble from its heavy load, Thornton attempts to parachute out and plummets to his death. A bear stumbles onto the drugs, ingests huge quantities, and develops a Tony Montana-level coke habit. Alternating between bizarre and violent behavior, the bear attacks nearly everyone it encounters. A series of interwoven subplots involving the drugs and the bear ensue, including Detective Bob (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) investigating Thornton’s fumbled drug run; Thornton’s accomplice, Syd (the late Ray Liotta), hunting for the cocaine; and schoolkids Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince) and Henry (Christian Convery) cutting school unwittingly close to the bear.
Probably the film’s funniest element is how it intentionally mocks its own declaration of “inspired by true events” which, even in serious current movies, is frequently double-talk that conceals a disregard for historical facts. The real cocaine bear reportedly never assaulted anyone and was simply found dead after OD-ing on the air-dropped cocaine. From there, Banks and screenwriter Jimmy Warden largely invented their story.
Cocaine Bear is distantly related to nature-in-revolt films like Grizzly and Day of the Animals—both of those films are better made and more entertaining—and the Italian Wild Beasts, about murderous zoo animals juiced up on PCP. What made drive-in movies like those so appealing was the lack of irony that gave their many ludicrous moments a manic unpredictability and wonderful ridiculousness.
In a perfect world, Cocaine Bear would have been made in 1987 by a sleazy outfit like Cannon Films for about $1 million, played totally straight-faced, and starred a stuntman in a moth-eaten bear suit snorting lines off a Fat Boys LP cover. But Banks’ approach is annoyingly tongue-in-cheek, and her heavy-handed self-awareness spoils what could have been highly entertaining cinematic mayhem.
There aren’t many noteworthy performances, mainly because most of the characters are caricatures, especially the various grotesque Southerners. The audience has so little time to get acquainted with anyone on screen that the occasional bloody dismemberment hardly registers. Whitlock’s quietly funny detective is an exception, as are child actors Prince and Convery as the precocious youngsters.
The prodigiously talented Devo co-founder Mark Mothersbaugh has composed a surprisingly generic ’80s throwback score, and the bear and its attacks are generally pretty unconvincing—largely visual effects built around a motion-capture actor playing the beast.
When a movie works overtime to be as dumb as Cocaine Bear, it becomes almost critic-proof: When you pick it apart, the filmmakers can always say they meant it to be lousy. Deliberate amateurism like this usually goes awry fast, and such is the case here. If you want to be wildly entertained by gory, unhinged junk, let this slick Hollywood imitation hibernate and seek out the genuine, untamed variety elsewhere in the film vaults of the wild.
Random Row’s Kevin McElroy says he’s had to up his prices because of hop cost increases. In 2023, German and Czech hops in particular will be pricier and scarcer due to poor harvests last year. Photo by Eze Amos.
Brewing beer is about control: controlling ingredients, controlling processes, controlling product.
But it’s also about deciding when to let go.
Take Three Notch’d Brewing Company. It started small, with brewmaster Dave Warwick, supported by a team of four administrators, making a few hundred barrels of craft beer per year at their Preston Avenue home.
At the time, in 2013, Warwick controlled a lot of what was going on. He brewed the beer and helped with market research, administrative tasks, marketing, and accounting.
As his company grew, Warwick had less control over the Three Notch’d brew-niverse. He began delegating responsibilities, and the change seems to have worked to the brewery’s advantage. 3NB now has a full accounting department, HR director, six-person marketing department, chief growth officer, VP of sales, and VP of retail. “That allows me to focus just on the liquid,” Warwick says. “Not wearing as many hats is great for both me and the company.”
Today, 3NB is the largest beer producer inside Charlottesville city limits by a wide margin. In-town brewers produced about 17,500 barrels of beer last year, with Three Notch’d accounting for roughly 15,000. At 31 gallons per barrel, that’s 542,500 gallons of beer produced in 2022—enough to fill 85 percent of an olympic-size swimming pool. Or enough to send 4.34 million pints sliding over the bartop.
The production number should tick up in 2023 to 23,500 barrels, with most Charlottesville breweries increasing production numbers and at least one small brewer expected to go online.
In other words, that olympic-size swimming pool will overflow by 60,000 gallons by the end of the year. Charlottesville drinkers will have access to nearly 6 million pints within a 10.3-square-mile area.
“There’s something really special about being able to go to a neighborhood brewery and drink a beer that was packaged literally an hour before you’re drinking it,” says Josh Skinner, director of brewing operations at Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville’s nano-est craft operation. “I think people recognize the value in that, and it’s why our industry has enjoyed continued enthusiasm and support from the community we serve.”
Peter McMindes, owner and head brewer at Rockfish Brewing Company, says he has little interest in distribution. “There’s legislation out there to allow small breweries to self-distribute; then we’d be able to put some specialty bottles out to local bottle shops,” McMindes says. “But we’re not dealing with economies of scale or volume that makes distribution worthwhile.” Photo by Eze Amos.
Dialing in
Can craft beer makers control their production numbers? Sure, to a certain extent. But they’re also beholden to market demand and, increasingly, supply chain and distribution issues.
Craft beer production and consumption totals are projected to increase substantially nationwide in the next year. This prediction is inconsistent with recent trends, according to Keith Clark, central Virginia sales director for Virginia Eagle Distributing Co.
Clark says the past several years saw craft beer slowly leak its “share of throat” as new drinks percolated. That doesn’t mean craft beer is shrinking, but it’s not growing at nearly the clip it did over the previous decade.
Hard seltzers were first to encroach on beer’s share, then it was ready-to-drink cocktails in cans, with seltzers taking a slight dip downward. “That’s not to say seltzers aren’t still doing extremely well,” Clark says. “It’s just not the hot new thing anymore.”
Brewers Association national beer sales and production data indicate craft beer continued its “long and unsteady recovery in 2022,” with retail sales back to pre-pandemic levels but “draught beer … still recovering.” In 2021, the last full year for which the association has comprehensive data, total U.S. beer sales were essentially flat, but craft volumes ticked up by 8 percent, raising small and independent brewers’ market share to 13.1 percent. Production volume showed similar 2021 growth, with overall beer ticking up 1 percent and craft growing 7.9 percent. Craft beer’s retail dollar sales also grew in 2021, to $26.8 billion. Analysts, though, say the increase was mostly due to consumers paying more for brew in bars and restaurants than they did in stores in 2020.
The Brewers Association reports 9,247 breweries operated nationwide in 2021. Five hundred fifty opened in 2022, but at least 200 closed. Brewery openings topped off in 2018, while closings reached a head in 2020, largely due to COVID-19. Even so, closure rates had increased every year since 2013, regardless of the C-word’s effect.
Charlottesville wasn’t immune to the trend, and after years of industry expansion, a well-regarded local shop, Reason Beer, closed its doors. Reason’s closing came about in no small part due to a star-crossed merger with Champion Brewing Company. “Our facility merger at the beginning of last year was so snake-bitten from the start when it comes to lead times and supply chain issues out of our control,” says Champion owner Hunter Smith.
Defying the openings trend locally was Rockfish Brewing Company, which launched a second nano-brewery and taproom last year on the Downtown Mall. This year, Neon Culture Brewing has a chance to launch a two-barrel system capable of brewing 500 barrels annually—though owner Corey Hoffman says he will likely continue operating at a low level out of the Decipher brewhouse—and SuperFly Brewing Co. expects to get off the ground and pump out up to 400 barrels.
“Without having been open, there already seems to be some enthusiasm in town for it,” says Ed Liversidge, SuperFly owner and operator. “I certainly think there is a town full of people willing to come and try new beer. I know that’s how I feel about it. I’ll always go check out the new place.”
Liversidge says he plans to carve his niche in the local taproom market as he goes, using consumer feedback to find the beers that resonate most. It’s a move that gives away a lot of control to beer drinkers.
But maybe central Virginia beer lovers are special, and maybe Charlottesville can support more breweries per capita than most small towns. After all, Richmond has the fourth-most breweries per capita in the country (25 breweries, for 10.77 per 100,000 residents), according to Move.org.
“All the small breweries here are quite different, and there are things I like about each of them,” says Liversidge, whose background and brewing lineage has taken him from the U.K. to the U.S. West Coast and now Virginia.
Decipher Brewing’s Barley Late Kölsch
was among several Charlottesville-area beers that won significant awards last August at the annual Virginia Craft Beer Cup competition. Photo by Tristan Williams.
Taking on challenges
Smith opened the Champion taproom doors adjacent to downtown Charlottesville in 2012. Times were simple then. Get raw materials, make unique beer, sell it across the bar. But Champion grew quickly, and with rapid growth came control issues.
One solution? Retake control of the environment in which consumers enjoy beer. For Smith and Champion, that meant featuring restaurants in their expansion strategy. The approach sidesteps Virginia’s sometimes tricky distribution regulations and ensures the product arriving at a beer-lover’s table is the one the brewer intends.
Enter COVID. Restaurant closures meant folks could only consume beer in their homes. Restaurants like Champion Grill in The Shops at Stonefield and the brewery’s Lynchburg location closed in 2021. Then, late last year, Champion announced a major distribution move, shifting its ale allocation to Bevana, a North Carolina-based company launched by former Champion principal Levi Duncan.
Three Notch’d Brewing Company started small, with brewmaster Dave Warwick, who was supported by a team of four administrators, making a few hundred barrels of craft beer a year at their Preston Avenue home. Photo by Ashley Cox Photography.
The latest wave of Charlottesville breweries, including Random Row Brewing Co., Decipher Brewing, Rockfish, Selvedge, and the still-to-come SuperFly, have all sidestepped beer distro challenges by sticking to taproom-only sales. Each ballparks its packaged to-go brewshare at around 10 percent of overall sales. That includes only hand-bottled or canned offerings and growlers/crowlers filled at the tap.
“I don’t really have much of a desire to distribute,” says Peter McMindes, Rockfish owner and head brewer. “There’s legislation out there to allow small breweries to self-distribute; then we’d be able to put some specialty bottles out to local bottle shops. But we’re not dealing with economies of scale or volume that makes distribution worthwhile.”
Supply chain issues are another story. The pandemic and an industry-wide drift away from bottled beer set off a can shortage two years ago. Now cans seem to be back, but brewers face the same raw materials cost increases as business owners do in nearly every economic sector.
“I’m getting emails from all our suppliers, from grain to hops to CO2, saying they have to raise prices, and we can’t just keep raising ours to the point that we price ourselves out of the market,” says Brad Burton, co-owner and head brewer for Decipher.
According to Skinner, sourcing malt from local malster Murphy & Rude has softened the blow of rising freight costs. Still, Random Row’s Kevin McElroy says he’s had to up prices due to hop cost increases. German and Czech hops in particular will be pricier and scarcer throughout 2023 after poor harvests last year.
Staffing is another issue befuddling brewers, but Burton says properly run nano-shops are uniquely suited to combat inevitable HR issues. “We were in the best possible spot we could have been in the shutdown,” he says. “We didn’t have any employees or distribution. The brewers that had large distributions took the brunt of the hit, because there was zero beer going out in kegs and being sold to restaurants. Just managing growth—that’s what gives you a sustainable model.”
Burton doesn’t expect to see further contraction in the craft brewing industry—people have been talking about a “bubble” for a decade, he says—and other brewers around town tend to agree. Breweries are notoriously helpful to one another, and the taproom sales model keeps locations from competing for shelf space. Warwick, who does have to worry about shelf space constraints, also points out the lack of competition between 3NB and the nanos. “That’s why it’s easy to be friends, get along, and help each other grow,” he says.
Smith, whose distribution at its height reached farther than any other Charlottesville-proper brewery, believes the industry is finally beginning to stabilize. Brewers can now forecast raw material pricing and need, not to mention consumer demand, he says. “Keg sales came back, but it’s not the same, and it may never be the same,” he says. “There was a point at which every restaurant had to become a beer bar. Now bars and restaurants are saying they don’t necessarily need 20 taps to make their customers happy. It’s more competitive for those taps, but volume is climbing back.”
After all the chaos of the last several years, maybe some sense of control is back.
“There’s something really special about being able to go to a neighborhood brewery and drink a beer that was packaged literally an hour before you’re drinking it,” says Josh Skinner, director of brewing operations at Selvedge Brewing. Photo by Eze Amos.
Tippling with trends
For his part, McMindes isn’t willing to give up control when it comes to flavor-of-the-week preferences. “We don’t do trendy stuff,” the Rockfish owner says. “We don’t even name our beers. And our logo doesn’t have anything to do with beer.”
McMindes says he went into brewing because he couldn’t find anything on the market as good and suited to his own taste as he made on his homebrew system. It’s a familiar hubris that has led to the downfall of many well-meaning hobbyists-cum-pros. But McMindes might be onto something by emphasizing personal taste.
In McMindes’ mind, nano breweries have more control than anyone else in the beer biz. They aren’t beholden to growth or profits. They can listen to their customers right over the bar, taking the hard work out of market research.
For breweries that do follow trends, Clark says the one that stands out above all others is consumers looking to control themselves—by drinking non-alcoholic beer. “Our Anheuser-Busch rep showed me the NA numbers in Europe, and I was like, ‘There is no way,’” Clark says.
The trend has certainly spread across the Atlantic. Clark says Virginia Eagle ran out of its NA portfolio during the past Dry January, a now-annual tradition when sober-curious folks give up the alcoholic goods.
Smith notes that non-alcoholic beer has become tastier due to the ever advancing science behind it, and drinkers who would never before reach for an O’Doul’s or St. Pauli NA now select near beer over hazy IPAs, adjunct stouts, and fruited sours.
These days, not only are the national guys getting into the NA game, but the locals are going buzz-free as well. 3NB looks to lead the mocktail barrage in Charlottesville. Warwick says the brewery doesn’t know yet how much NA will constitute its production this year, but he and his team launched the non-alcoholic Uncool brand in January with plans to expand.
Non-alcoholic drink demand is echoed in a trend several local brewers point out—a growing gusto for lagers at 4.0-range ABVs rather than IPAs in the 6s and above. Burton, for one, is all about that lager life.
But NA fanaticism flies in the face of another trend that has the attention of local brewers: relatively high ABV cocktails in cans. Even though it ain’t beer, the big guys like 3NB and Champion are launching ready-to-drinks to grab a share of the latest drinking deluge.
Clark says he’s seeing some of today’s price-conscious consumers going to the extreme on lager love, rejecting the skyrocketing price of craft beer and rediscovering quaint macros like PBR. Warwick says he hasn’t seen the same.
“My favorite thing about craft beer is that the loyalty isn’t so much to brands as it is to style,” Warwick says. “Craft beer drinkers share the love … and everything I see is people will still gladly pay extra for flavor, quality, and to support local brewers and craft.”
McMindes notes that, locally, most breweries have gone the Champion route and try to control the downstream consumption environment by running restaurants instead of taprooms only. His approach? Stay on brand. Reject the trend.
When Hunter Smith launched Champion Brewing Company in 2012, he says he wanted his brand to be a foil to the area’s big players like Starr Hill, Blue Mountain, and Devils Backbone. Photo by Eze Amos.
Finding a balance
Even Charlottesville’s beer can’t be controlled.
Yes, we know citywide production should be about 23,500 barrels next year. But we also know that crouched just outside of town are major brewing industry tigers who stand to top that production by at least five-fold.
Starr Hill, opened by Mark Thompson in downtown Charlottesville in 1999 before craft beer was cool, can reportedly dump nearly 30,000 barrels annually from its Crozet and Roanoke brewhouses. Devils Backbone, purchased by A-B InBev in 2016 to the chagrin of beer nerds, boasts production of 84,000 annual barrels. And Blue Mountain, whose owner Taylor Smack also runs South Street Brewing downtown, makes almost 3,000 barrels per year.
Several other players dot the 151 corridor—Thompson’s Brewing Tree, WildManDan Brewery, Hazy Mountain—which has become a destination for beer lovers, many of whom have no idea what’s going on down the road in Charlottesville.
“That corridor is only getting busier and busier,” Warwick says—and 3NB is looking to get in on the 151 action; the team has purchased the assets of the former Wild Wolf Brewing Company and plans to run it under its own label. “It’s such a destination,” Warwick says. “It’s definitely the hub in Virginia for amazing alcoholic beverages, from wine to beer to hard cider to distilling, even mead.”
When Smith launched Champion, he in fact wanted his brand to be a foil to the big players right outside town. Starr Hill, Blue Mountain, and Devils Backbone had seen so much success selling lagers; he and Champion would carve their niche in unique ales and one-off releases. “We used to joke that we never needed to brew a single lager beer,” Smith says.
That outlook has changed, Smith admits, as so many things have on the local beer scene. For years, Champion was the biggest brew producer inside city limits. The company pushed its Woolen Mills Missile Factory, named after the brewery’s flagship IPA, to a 15,000 barrel capacity in 2016, with lagers a major part of the mix.
But last year, Smith and Champion moved the production site outside town. The new brewery was “essentially a construction site” most of the year, Smith says, brewing only 2,500 barrels in 2022. This year, Smith expects the number to be back up to nearly 7,000.
For Champion, other things over the last several years were beyond control. The closure of two Champion Hospitality Group restaurants was only the culmination of the group’s supply chain and consumer demand issues.
“Expansion through restaurants has always been something that we had hoped to do in partnership. We are a brewery. We are not restaurant experts,” Smith says. “But I have to laugh. Expanding through restaurants when we did was a stroke of bad luck.”
Smith says the future is under control, though, and it’s a sentiment that’s reflected by brewers all across the hamlet.
“Last year was really tough,” Smith says. “But without going into great detail, keep watching. We are not done.”
